Internet Explorer 6 SP 1 Cant Display Blank Pixel GIF Right.

Horizon

Novice

Posts: 25

Loc: West Milford, NJ

3+ Months Ago

I have been having a issue with IE 6 SP1 not displaying a blank pixel gif that i use to space out the page. I have a screenshot of the page and the blank spots you see that are not loaded images are the blank_pixel.gif a 1 x 1 gif that is a transparent pixel. I can right click the picture and do SHOW PICTURE and it shows the images that were not loaded correctly. I also can hit GO in the browser title bar and it loads fine. Also the site looks fine in any other browser, Nescrape and Mozilla.

I just noticed that it happened here on OZZU forums when the image didnt load and showed a RED X....so I right clicked and did SHOW PICTURE and it loaded fine. Anyone seen this before?

RichB

Guru

Posts: 1121

Loc: Boston

3+ Months Ago

It happens intermittently here at ozzu to me, although not very often.

I'm not sure why it isn't finding you blank image, but if you're not already using vspace and hspace try setting the width and height to 1 and using vspace="10" and hspace="10" or whatever for the spacing around the image. You might prevent the blank area from becoming visible if the transparent image doesn't load. At a width and height of 1, IE doesn't show anything to me when a transparent image doesn't load, but it still provides the spacing specified in vspace and hspace. At least it does for me with IE 6 and win98 and NE 7 seems to behave the same way for me.

Horizon

Novice

Posts: 25

Loc: West Milford, NJ

3+ Months Ago

Those spaces are caused by a blank_pixel.gif with attributes like this...

That rootpath is defined on our webserver and it works fine for normal gifs elsewhere its not every image on the page, it just seems to be ones with Transparency in them....I have some arrow gifs that dont show up sometimes but when you do a show picture they do.

RichB

Guru

Posts: 1121

Loc: Boston

3+ Months Ago

If it's inserting the path correctly, I don't know why it's not finding it. I don't think the transparent nature of it would be a factor, but I always used to use vspace and hspace for the space around the transparent image and set the width and height to 1 in case it didn't load properly.

Maybe someone else will be able to help you out.

Horizon

Novice

Posts: 25

Loc: West Milford, NJ

3+ Months Ago

Yea thanks for the help but I have Microsoft on it cause I think its a IE 6 SP1 bug...but i dont think everyone has the problem though....I know at home I have XP with IE 6 SP1 and I never have this problem....its very strange.

I thought maybe someone had the problem and corrected it somehow.

ATNO/TW

Super Moderator

Posts: 23454

Loc: Woodbridge VA

3+ Months Ago

Try making the image 2x2 pixels. I've had similar probs with 1X1 pixels in the past but never have with 2x2

Horizon

Novice

Posts: 25

Loc: West Milford, NJ

3+ Months Ago

hmm that didnt work, it seems to only happen when I stretch the image out when its a blank pixel but I do get it occasionally on other images but not as often as the blank_pixel which is 1 by 1 that I am stretching.

Bigwebmaster

Site Admin

Posts: 9072

Loc: Seattle, WA & Phoenix, AZ

3+ Months Ago

Horizon wrote:

Yea thanks for the help but I have Microsoft on it cause I think its a IE 6 SP1 bug...but i dont think everyone has the problem though....I know at home I have XP with IE 6 SP1 and I never have this problem....its very strange.

I thought maybe someone had the problem and corrected it somehow.

Do you have problems loading any other gifs? I had this problem about 6 months ago and it is in fact a Microsoft SP1 bug. For me sometimes the gifs would load and other times it would not load. It would be totally random and if I would hit refresh on the page you could clearly see it loading sometimes, and clearly not loading other times. I looked at the server logs to see what was going on and the times it did not load was when the browser never even made a http request to the server for that image.

I remembered when I searched Google there was tons of talk about it. The bug was really botherhing me but I was finally able to fix it by reinstalling my entire computer. After I installed I did not reinstall SP1, and my problem was gone. Since that time I have now installed all the service packs again and I still have no problems so I assumed Microsoft finally fixed their bug. Did this bug take place after you installed Service Pack 1?

Horizon

Novice

Posts: 25

Loc: West Milford, NJ

3+ Months Ago

You hit the nail on the head, its a bug that happened right after SP1 install, I just dont want to reinstall the pc. I am gonna go back to 5.5 just waiting on this MS rep to give up. He keeps giving me fixes that do not work. He sent me hot fix that was in relation to this article Q817177.

ITs really frustrating and silly that MS cant fix this, it does happen on other gifs besides the blank one, and when you reload it may work but GO works better.

Bigwebmaster

Site Admin

Posts: 9072

Loc: Seattle, WA & Phoenix, AZ

3+ Months Ago

I remember before I tried numerous fixes as well, and they all did not work. That was why I finally gave up and reinstalled. I am curious though, when I had that problem usually parts of this graph would never load:

http://www.bigwebmaster.com/dvts/admin. ... s_per_hour

Hit refresh about 10 times and after each refresh see if the graph loads completley or if you get x's or spots that are missing in the graph.

Horizon

Novice

Posts: 25

Loc: West Milford, NJ

3+ Months Ago

oh yea I get tons of red x's...but i hit go and the graph loads RIGHT. Weird. You gots to love MS, what did they change in the SP1 update. This doesnt happen at home on XP and IE 6 Sp1.

Bigwebmaster

Site Admin

Posts: 9072

Loc: Seattle, WA & Phoenix, AZ

3+ Months Ago

Yup, I still cannot believe Microsoft has this problem. I thought it would have been fixed by now. When I had the bug it was with Windows XP. After reinstalling Windows XP and getting all the updates again the bug was not there. I have not seen that bug anymore since.

Horizon

Novice

Posts: 25

Loc: West Milford, NJ

3+ Months Ago

Well I have gone through a hotfix, registry fix, clearing all the plugins in IE, before the MS rep told me it was the program that made the GIF, I almost laughed to death, the App, PS 6. Please.

The sites look fine in Netscrape 7.1 and Mozilla but not in IE, so it HAS to be IE....right? Well we will see when I get a answer tomorrow.

Horizon

Novice

Posts: 25

Loc: West Milford, NJ

3+ Months Ago

To top it off even more with IE 6 I have this problem at home.....

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;q260650

I have to go through more of the steps but clearing the cache does not fix the problem....ugh.

Bigwebmaster

Site Admin

Posts: 9072

Loc: Seattle, WA & Phoenix, AZ

3+ Months Ago

Yeah when I had that problem you did, it worked great in every other browser. People that work for companies will always give you the runaround so that they put the problem on another company. The problem is with Microsoft's Internet Explorer, I am almost positive. That rep has no idea what he is talking about.

Horizon

Novice

Posts: 25

Loc: West Milford, NJ

3+ Months Ago

MS reply

Please send me the HTML file and the GIF files it refers. Package the files in a ZIP file so I can perform some test on my end.

After reviewing a lot of similar cases, I found that the problem could be causes by some Internet Explorer extensions which operates as a proxy and keeps unwanted cookies off the system. If this is the cause, the solution is to uninstall the program, delete temp files and cookies. Or you may build up a clean Windows 2000 system and install IE6SP1 directly to test the webpage.

Internet Explorer 5.5 has been removed from our website. If you would like to restore Internet Explorer 5.0, just uninstall Internet Explorer 6 from Control Panel -> Add/Remove Program or perform a repair install of Windows 2000. That will roll back all the system files to the original version:

Horizon

Novice

Posts: 25

Loc: West Milford, NJ

3+ Months Ago

Still going back and forth with the MS rep, he doesnt get that its actually IE 6 SP 1 that has this problem. Tried having me go through removing Adobe Acrobat, MacAfee Virus scan and what not, to no avail. I save the page locally with the images SEEN, and when I reload the page from the local hd, guess what, boom same problem Damn M$

Bigwebmaster

Site Admin

Posts: 9072

Loc: Seattle, WA & Phoenix, AZ

3+ Months Ago

Yup he is going to make you remove every program probably, because they refuse to accept the blame that the problem is a bug in their own software. Everybody is always trying to pass the blame onto something else.

sflater

Born

Posts: 2

3+ Months Ago

Its the empty alt tags alt="", get rid of them and your problems will go away.

I've seen it occur on certain fixpacks on SP1 of IE 6.

Horizon

Novice

Posts: 25

Loc: West Milford, NJ

3+ Months Ago

I am gonna try this at work tomorrow. If you are right I will be jumping for joy.....stay tuned.

Bigwebmaster

Site Admin

Posts: 9072

Loc: Seattle, WA & Phoenix, AZ

3+ Months Ago

Ohh, keep me posted. I want to know if what sflater says solves the problem.

Horizon

Novice

Posts: 25

Loc: West Milford, NJ

3+ Months Ago

Well I regret to inform you that this did not work

I am really pissed that I cant get this problem fixed....

sflater

Born

Posts: 2

3+ Months Ago

Sorry for the mis-direct. Unfortunately I made two changes in a single test and assumed the wrong one fixed the problem. I see this problem on my browser consistently. I have IE 6 SP1 Q813489, Q330994 and Q818529. I know others with SP! and a different set of fixpacks who don't get the issue.

Heres what appears to have some impact.

I have a page with two layers that are hidden initially, with javascript which sets one of the two layers to visible onload. In this scenario, the images do not show. If I set one of the layers to visible by default, everything works fine, most of the time, but the problem still appears every 10-15 loads. So at least for me, this issue appears to be worse with the layers and visible/hidden settings. Reducing the nested tables also appears to lessen the impact.

It only appears to occur on the images that I stretch in two directions (width and height). My work-around is to use two images, one to get the width with a 1 pixel height and one to get the height with a one pixel width.

Horizon

Novice

Posts: 25

Loc: West Milford, NJ

3+ Months Ago

Quote:

It only appears to occur on the images that I stretch in two directions (width and height). My work-around is to use two images, one to get the width with a 1 pixel height and one to get the height with a one pixel width.

This worked...but now with regular images it happens with. So I am in contact with MS and they need to fix this asap....gonna try SP 4 for win2k now.

madsb

Born

Posts: 1

3+ Months Ago

just subscribing to the thread... I have the same problem (IE6 on WinXP Pro).

Horizon

Novice

Posts: 25

Loc: West Milford, NJ

3+ Months Ago

Just an update we are still working on the problem with MS....

Bigwebmaster I sent them a link to that graph if you dont mind and 4 screenshots of how it looked everytime I refreshed it...

I found a interesting article ( http://lists.evolt.org/archive/Week-of-Mon-20030728/145915.html ) that talks about this occuring when the image is in the HTML more than a few times...this is hard to point this problem with mine.

I will keep you updated. Right now MS solution is to reimage my machine which I am trying to avoid.

Bigwebmaster

Site Admin

Posts: 9072

Loc: Seattle, WA & Phoenix, AZ

3+ Months Ago

In that article you just posted it says:

"Running the browser through a proxy shows that the browser doesn't even REQUEST the image in the scenarios where the image shows up broken."

I had verified that too with my logs. It simply does not even request the image, like it forgot that it was in the HTML or something.

"The only thing that seems to be consistent: The problem only manifests itself when there are several instances of the same image on the page. If you only had one spacer image on your page, you most likely won't receive the broken image. If you had ten or more, you probably will (if you have a browser that exhibits the behavior)."